Outline

Making effective visualizations

Graph from last time

Making effective visualizations

What makes a good graph?

  • Highlights the most important information
  • Reduces visual clutter (remove unnecessary backgrounds, lines, etc)
  • Clear, legible elements (text is big enough, colors/shapes are distinguishable)
  • Graphical elements map onto conceptual elements (graph mean +/- SE if showing inferential statistics, don’t show min/max if it’s not relevant)
  • Graph does not mislead the audience (sensible axes, doesn’t hide individual data/variability)
  • Scaffolds for interpreting figure (annotations, reference lines, scales)

How about this one?

How about this one?

How about this one?

How about this one?

How about this one?

How about this one?

How about this one?

Making effective sets of visualizations

Making effective sets of visualizations

What makes a good series of graphs in a paper?

  • Consistent scaling across graphs
  • Same mappings for shape/color/line styles across graphs
  • Consistent graphical styles (font sizes, line weights, capitalization, etc)

How about this one?

How about this one?

How about this one?

What graphical elements are appropriate for different types of data?

What graphical elements are appropriate for different types of data?

What graphical elements are appropriate for different types of data?

What graphical elements are appropriate for different types of data?

What graphical elements are appropriate for comparisons?

What graphical elements are appropriate for comparisons?

Representing error/distribution in comparison graphs

What are the pros/cons of including individual data?

  • Pros?
  • Cons?

Representing error/distribution in comparison graphs

What are the pros/cons of including individual data?

  • Pros?
    • Most transparent
    • Shows distribution, not just mean/sd
  • Cons?
    • Does not always highlight the comparison
    • Raises questions about semi-outliers, influential points
    • Not always possible if there’s a lot of data

Plotting individuals

Plotting groups